


the poppy

by sirfeit



Series: primeverse [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, Gen, Jordan Green being a functioning character, Minor Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Minor Bellamy Blake/John Murphy, Plot, Politics, Sanctum (The 100), everyone lives on a farm, vitiligo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:54:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24747928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirfeit/pseuds/sirfeit
Summary: There’s another smooth voice on top of the girl’s, and the boy’s. “That’s all we need right now, boss,” says the boy.“I want to stay,” says the smooth voice, and that stirs some kind of recognition in him. Monty (worried face, stupid puns, brother) -- and Harper (bright and true) -- like if you put them together, this is what you might get. Like if you messed with the DNA simulators on the Ring long enough, except brought to life.“‘S that the baby?” he asks the girl next to him. “The --” they’ve met, the baby is older than him, but you don’t miss 26 years of your nephew’s life just to leave him out on all the teasing. He’s got a name, right? C’mon, dumbass, pick up where you left off. “Jordan?”--or, Murphy gets to live in the farmhouse, after all.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo
Series: primeverse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789546
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	1. my heart’s worst fear

**Author's Note:**

> but, like the poppy,
> 
> I have become something more dangerous than I was once  
> & this is how I have learned my heart’s worst fears.
> 
> each small misery could be something which takes us away from each other.
> 
> [Hanif Abdurraqib]

**SEASON: EARLY SPRING**

The chill comes for him eventually. It’s already absorbed into everything else in his cell, not like there’s much. The bars are cool to the touch. The floor is damp. The walls are wet sometimes, and that’s good for a drink at least. He wonders if that means it’s raining. Outside. 

It hurts to think of the outside. And then it kind of hurts to think, or to breathe, or to drink.

Everything hurts. It hasn’t killed him yet.

Bellamy comes down to stare at him and give him soft foods that slide down his raw throat. Bellamy talks to him, but it’s like his ears are stuffed with cotton, like Bellamy is a century separated from him.

“Murphy,” Bellamy is saying, like his name means anything anymore. “Murphy. Do you feel -- bad? Are you sick?”

_ What, you think I’m faking this? What would be the point? _

“Fuck off,” he croaks out, miserable. He doesn’t feel hungry, for the first time in a long time. It’s just -- he doesn’t want to eat. He pushes his food away. Take it back.

“I’ll get you something,” says Bellamy, and if there’s a note of panic in his voice, a note of concern?

Fuck, maybe he’s dying.

Bellamy gets him meds and a blanket. Doesn’t help. And it keeps Not Helping, even when he gets food that’s slightly warm from sitting outside in the sun. Even when Bellamy starts coming down in lighter jackets over his sweater. He looks - cozy. Sometimes his hair is damp, his shoulders speckled with wet, like it’s raining. How long has it been? Days? Months? Time melts and bleeds. 

He sweats and shivers. 

_ How long-- how long-- _

He coughs up the green-and-yellow slime in his lungs, but there’s always more. His teeth rattle in his head. He’s cold. He sweats through his shirt, clammy with it. Clammy like the walls, like the floor, like the air. He feels like he’s breathing underwater.

Bellamy gives him more water.

Miller takes it away. 

The circle of life.

Despite the distant misery, and the way his lungs work to drown him, the question gnaws at him:

_ How long have I been down here? _

#

The Farm survived winter. The adjustments he made from last winter -- what to save, what will grow again, which fields to sow in, when the hardest rains will come? It all paid off, and Jordan Jasper Green has arrived safely on the other end of winter. It was hard. The months stretched. He didn’t think it was ever going to end, didn’t think the chill was ever going to thaw out of his bones. But here he is, still alive. There were no deaths this year, not as far as he knows. Maybe, in the city -- Bellamy doesn’t usually bring him bad news. It gets clogged up in his brain, along with everything else. It  _ lingers. _ And bad news in the city doesn’t affect him -- what use is there, knowing?

It’s better that he doesn’t know.

He’s glad Bellamy doesn’t tell him. He has enough to worry about, without putting bodies on his conscience, too.

[More bodies, anyway.]

Jordan nips that thought in the bud, clenching his jaw. Those thoughts never go anywhere useful. There’s work to be done.

It’s the second month of spring, and Bellamy is due for a visit soon. Maybe this afternoon. It’s enough to rouse him from his desk, joints snap-crackle-popping from too long hunched over. 

He comes downstairs, bringing some of his work with him. Breakfast has ended, so there’s room at the table. He takes a spot near the living room, so he can hear if someone knocks on the front door. Pearl, his assistant, does not look thrilled to have him in her space. He’s not sure he has ever actually seen her happy. 

Pearl has always been stern, her face a death-mask with the white birthmark across her eyes, a reverse raccoon mask against her dark skin. She has another white birthmark across her mouth and chin, going all the way down her neck. Some of the farmhands have balked at that, or maybe at having a woman boss them around, he doesn’t know. Jordan has never cared, but then, Pearl has never bossed him around. She’s his second in command at the farm, and she takes care of all the minutiae that comes with running the place. Jordan’s more of a big-ideas guy. 

Will, the first farmhand that arrived here and Pearl’s second, has big brown eyes paired with soft brown skin and hair. Pearl delegates to him, and he divides everything up among the farmhands. They have eight farm hands, not counting Will and Pearl, and things get done around here. They survived winter, didn’t they? Things are going well. They get food to the city and they have enough left over for themselves. 

Things are going well, he reminds himself. It’s important to think of the good things, instead of the bad.

Bellamy knocks on the door, drawing Jordan out of his thoughts. Pearl stands, but Jordan is the one who answers the door. Bellamy smiles at him, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Hey, JJ,” he says. “How are things?”

“Things are great,” says Jordan, and he makes sure that his own smile touches his whole face. It takes more work than it used to. “How’s the city life?”

“It could be better,” says Bellamy, which he’s never said before, and Jordan feels his smile drop. “Can we take this to your office?” he goes on, glancing up toward the stairs.

“Of course.” 

Three flights later, Bellamy closes the door. He waits until Jordan is sitting down at his desk, and he takes the squashy stuffed chair that Jordan keeps up here. “I have a prisoner,” he says, slowly. “They’ve been sentenced to serve ten years in the dungeon by the Council, but—“

“Why aren’t they already here?” He doesn’t mean to ask, but, well. 

“Again, the Council,” says Bellamy, pained. “I need to transfer them here because they’re very sick. You can use them as a farmhand until winter, if you need to -- I just need them to stay alive, and the conditions in the dungeon aren’t helping them.”

Jordan frowns. It’s -- not like they need more farmhands, they’re all set on that front, and it’s not really like they have any interest in taking in a prisoner. But. It’s Bellamy. “Alright. We’ll take them in, for now.” There’s two or three more spare bedrooms still available -- Pearl will figure out the details.

Bellamy sighs, relieved. “There are also some -- special accommodations that this prisoner will require.”

“We wouldn’t do that for any other farmhand --” Jordan tries to cut in. 

Bellamy raises one hand, stopping him before he gets started. “This prisoner is an escape risk, and it’s only temporary. Just for a season or two. I’ll make sure that the farm is well-compensated.” 

He is so hopeful, and -- Jordan was never going to say no. Bellamy gives him the plans and the list, and Jordan starts work on this new project.

The others have the spring planting well in hand, anyway.

#

Bellamy comes down for him way earlier than usual. Like, he is not so good at time anymore, but he is pretty sure nobody is supposed to feed him for -- six hours, maybe. Bellamy fucks with him, sometimes, but -- 

Bellamy comes into his cell without any hesitation -- he’s not even  _ chained,  _ he can’t -- and gives him a bundle of soft fabric. A -- a sweater? It’s green, and it’s so -- it’s  _ so soft,  _ softer than anything he’s felt for months, softer than his slippers were when he first got them. “Put it on,” says Bellamy, and he obeys orders, no need for shocking, and pulls it over his head. It’s --  _ warm.  _ And it — smells like Bellamy, like new spring air, like the  _ outside.  _ Bellamy runs a hand through Murphy’s filthy hair, and it takes him a second to realize it’s affectionate, a reward, before he sinks into it.

“Hands behind your back,” says Bellamy, still easy, but firm, and he does it, but it feels — he feels  _ bad.  _ Bellamy never puts chains on him, and it’s — he still has three days left, before they go on. He coughs into his shoulder as Bellamy fixes the cuffs on him, phlegm and wet and too cold and heat on his wrists. Bellamy does the elbow strap too, the one Miller always brings when they hose him down. It’s soft, it doesn’t cut into his skin, he has Bellamy’s sweater, it’s okay. It’s — just gotta accept it, because the — collar — he has to. 

Bellamy squeezes his shoulder, which he gets is supposed to be an encouragement, just a little too late. Cuffs go on his ankles, short enough that it would be difficult to walk. Not like he does a lot of that anyway. Bellamy pulls Murphy up to his feet, although he’s wobbling a little. Bellamy does something to his collar and — a shock! Not that bad though. Just. Betrayed. He sniffs snot back into his throat and swallows it. Bellamy opens the door to his cell. He gets Murphy by the back of his neck, pulls him forward. Murphy struggles, resists for the first time since Bellamy came down for him.

“No!” He says. “I didn’t do anything — no!”

Bellamy stops, goes back to stroking Murphy’s hair. Lets him rest his forehead against Bellamy’s chest. “Shhh,” says Bellamy. “Shh, shh, I turned off the field, you’re not gonna get shocked. I’m taking you out of your cell.”

This doesn’t — that doesn’t make sense. He can’t — he can’t — what? “How long?” He asks. “Five years?”

“Oh, no,” says Bellamy, and he sounds sad. “You’re not done with your sentence yet. You’re just being moved. The air down here — it’s not good for you.”

_ Yeah, no shit. _ “To a different cell?” Murphy asks, like there’s — any other option, other than solitary confinement forever.

“To a different cell,” confirms Bellamy. “Above ground. And you’re gonna have a window, and a mattress in your new cell. Does that sound good?”

That sounds like — It’s fucking garbage that he is so pathetically grateful. “Float yourself,” he says, but his heart’s not in it.

“In a minute,” says Bellamy, kind and calm. “Let’s get you into the car first.”

Bellamy helps him out of his cell, up some stairs, up some other stairs, and down and up and right and left some corridors. He can’t do it all in one go. He’s exhausted before they get to the first door. He  _ hurts _ so much, still -- his back hurts, his throat hurts, his mouth hurts; even his  _ hair  _ hurts.

“You gotta -- you gotta stop,” he gasps into Bellamy’s chest, halfway down some corridor. Bellamy lets him stop, lets him lean into his chest. Bellamy takes a minute, feels his forehead. Murphy doesn’t understand how that will help.

“C’mere,” says Bellamy, which is weird, because he is  _ already there _ , and then Bellamy just picks him up, lifts him like it’s not a big deal. Which it’s not, he’s lost a lot of weight, he’s skinnier than he ever was on the ground, but also it’s the biggest deal. It’s -- he’s -- Nobody has touched him  _ this much _ since they put him in this cell. He’s filthy, and Bellamy’s skin underneath his shirt is warm, and he’s nauseous and dizzy and he can’t even clutch onto Bellamy. He breathes, ragged, through his mouth, and squeezes his eyes shut. Seeing the world pass him by is too much. 

Bellamy sets him down right outside the big double doors that lead to the outside world, kind of leaning against the wall. The light -- the sun from outside -- is already too much. He’s tearing up. The opulence of the palace behind him -- also overwhelming. He leans against the wall and tries to focus on Bellamy.

“Open up,” says Bellamy.

Murphy sniffs, and then sniffs louder, and his whole mouth tastes like blood. He opens up, and Bellamy patiently stuffs a wadded up cloth inside and he -- he can’t fucking breathe. He can’t get air in around the cloth, and his nose is stuffed up, and he tries to look up at Bellamy, to meet his eyes. This is how you’re going to kill me?? Bellamy isn’t looking at him, and he  _ screams  _ through the gag -- it’s well-muffled, so fuck that -- and Bellamy looks at him, stupid, stupid, stupid --

Murphy headbutts Bellamy in the chest, as hard as he can. Bellamy isn’t even phased. Murphy blows his nose into Bellamy’s shirt, harder than the headbutt. His ears pop violently. Bellamy’s fingers are in his mouth, tugging the wet cloth out. Murphy doesn’t bite down. 

Bellamy’s hand is in his hair, soft, petting. Murphy  _ isn’t  _ crying. It’s just -- it’s just the light. “Can’t breathe,” he says to the ground underneath them. 

“It’s okay,” says Bellamy, still soft. “Shh, shh, we’ll try something else, okay?”

He tips Murphy’s face up with a hand on his chin, and he’s got a strip of cloth in his hand. He ties a knot in the middle and sets it gently in Murphy’s mouth, tying it behind his head. He can breathe around the knot. He could probably talk, too, but it’d be -- bad. Embarrassing. He lets out a low moan, tired and grateful. Bellamy keeps petting his hair. When he stops, Murphy moans again, and Bellamy taps him sharply. Shut up, Murphy.

A black bag comes out of Bellamy’s pocket next. It comes over Murphy’s head, blocking out sight and muffling sound. It tightens at his neck, tucking into the collar. He can breathe fine through it. 

Bellamy helps him shuffle out to a -- car, maybe. Feels like the back of the Rover, but the Rover’s dead with the rest of Earth. Bellamy helps him sit down and get his feet in, moving them up so he doesn’t knock against -- the wall, or something. Murphy curls up inside, on his stomach, keeping as much strain as he can off his arms and shoulders. He turns his head, and breathes through the gag. Bellamy puts a heavy hand on his neck, presses down, and then leaves him completely. Murphy keeps his head down. The car rumbles to life, and they’re moving to -- wherever.

Murphy chews on his gag. He thinks if he threw up, he would be dead before Bellamy even noticed. He tries to keep breathing beyond that thought.

#

Jordan is sitting on the farmhouse’s porch when Bellamy’s car approaches. Bellamy gives a wave when he sees Jordan, and Jordan returns it, and then Bellamy’s face pulls into concentration as he turns the car around and backs up so that the trunk is facing the farmhouse and the driver’s side is facing the road beyond the farmhouse. Will stands by the door, his arms crossed over his green jacket. Pearl stands next to him, her mouth pulled into a frown.

They're a sorry welcoming committee, but it’s better than any other farmhand ever got. The thought prickles, and Jordan reminds himself: Bellamy  _ said  _ it was a special case. Special case deserves special treatment. It only makes sense. If four people to one prisoner seems a little overkill, it’s just something he’s got to live with.

He’s got to trust Bellamy on this.

Bellamy parks, and comes around the back of the car to open the trunk. There’s -- a body inside. The face is obscured by a hood, and they’re wearing a shock-collar as well. Jordan prepared for that -- the collar is geotagged to the boundary of the farm now, so if the farmhand tries to run, they’ll be shocked to unconsciousness. Nobody has ever tried to run from the farm before, but again, special case. 

Special case, special treatment.

Jordan comes up to the trunk to help if Bellamy needs him.

“Hey, JJ,” says Bellamy, warm and a little strained. “We’re gonna take him over to the boundary and make sure the collar works, and then I’ll leave you to get him settled in. Alright?”

“Yeah,” says Jordan. “I’m sure we can handle him.”

The prisoner’s hands are bound behind him, not only with a short set of handcuffs, but his elbows are tied as well. Bellamy lifts him from the trunk and sets him on his feet. The prisoner is unsteady, but he stays upright. Bellamy shoves him forward until he shuffles with short steps to the boundary of the farm, to the road beyond.

The prisoner is stumbling, blind, on the uneven ground, close to falling face-first into the loose gravel. He’s trying to feel his way with his feet as best he can, but now that Jordan is closer, he can see that those are chained too, close enough together that the prisoner has to measure each step out tentatively. Bellamy does not seem very patient, and when the prisoner stumbles over a loose rock, Jordan reaches out and catches him before he hits the ground. He can hear the prisoner’s ragged breathing through the hood, and a knot of unease forms in his stomach.

When they get to the edge, Bellamy yanks the prisoner back just as the collar begins to spark. “You feel that?” he hears Bellamy ask the prisoner, low, not meant for his ears. “That’s what you’ll get if you run. And everyone here has remotes for your collar, alright? You don’t have a chance. Nod if you understand.”

The prisoner makes a low, terrified sound underneath the hood, but nods his head up and down. Bellamy grips the prisoner by the shoulders and turns him around. “Walk,” he barks, sharp, and the prisoner begins his slow march back to the farmhouse, where Will and Pearl are waiting. “Jordan?” he asks, suddenly formal. “With me, alright?”

Jordan waits, to make sure that Will is leaving the porch to meet the prisoner, to help him back to the house, and then goes with Bellamy.

#

Bellamy takes a last moment with the prisoner, upstairs in the newly-built cell, and Jordan takes a few last moments of his own with Will and Pearl. “I have two extra remotes for the collar,” he says. “You both should keep one on you.”

“No, thank you,” says Pearl. “Sir.”

“Please, Pearl,” says Jordan, and he can’t believe he would ever -- beg her to do something. That he would need to. Pearl is here to assist, after all. “Bellamy said he’s a murderer.”

“He’s not the only one on this farm,” says Pearl, like he’s forgotten. 

“Pearl,” he tries, one more time, trying to shake his voice into something firm, like Bellamy does when he wants to be taken seriously. To mimic his own father’s voice, a hundred years ago. “I want you to be able to defend yourself --”   


“I can,” says Pearl, steel and bone.

He just -- he lets that go. “If you’re sure,” he says at last, wilting. “Will?”

Will looks anxiously to Pearl, and then back to Jordan. He crosses the space between them and takes one remote. Jordan breathes a sigh of relief, and tucks the remaining two in his own pocket. No sooner than that, Bellamy emerges from the prisoner’s cell, looking -- relieved, maybe. Knowing that Jordan’s got a handle on it, that this prisoner doesn’t have to weigh him down. He lays a heavy hand on Jordan’s shoulder and says in his rough baritone, 

“Thanks, JJ. I’ll be back to see how he’s getting along on Wednesday.”

“Okay,” says Jordan. “I’ll see you then. Do you want me to walk you out?”

“It’s alright,” says Bellamy. “I think I just need -- some time to myself.” He disappears down the stairs. Jordan can see Pearl physically steeling herself, for what’s behind the cell door. Jordan steps forward to unlock it, and then hands the rest of the keys to Will. Will enters, with some apprehension, Pearl follows. Jordan stays on the outside, hovering in the doorway. He doesn’t think the cell can fit all four of them.

He can hear Will unlocking the prisoner’s cuffs, removing the hood and the gag. A murmur, and then distressed, faint: “Where’s Bellamy?” and two voices trying to calm him down. Jordan tries to empathize with the prisoner; he was probably kept in the Council building for a long time, maybe doing administrative tasks for them. Getting coffee? Making copies? Whatever interns do, he guesses. Until he got sick, probably from being inside all the time, and Bellamy sent him here. 

Will emerges from the cell, the prisoner unchained and slung over his shoulder. Jordan gets a look at his face for the first time; sunken eyes, a long aquiline nose, exhausted and hollow but -- but --  _ familiar.  _

“That’s John Murphy,” he says out loud, struck dumb. 

He doesn’t --

He has changed his house for this prisoner, has altered its structure. Most farmhands don’t require a short leash, but Bellamy had insisted, here; the single window barred from the outside, the door replaced with a barred gate that locks from the outside, something Bellamy had provided for them. Bellamy had said it was important to remove all the furniture from inside the room, leaving nothing but the wooden floor and wallpaper. And then, after a beat; acquiesced to the inclusion of a bare mattress. 

“Yes,” says Pearl, but of course it doesn’t mean anything to her. Her eyes flicker to Will and back to him; weighing what she can order him to do. 

“I want to help,” he says, words tripping over each other. Murphy is -- no matter what has  _ happened _ , between him and Bellamy, before this --  _ now  _ he’s sick. His face is paler than usual, fever-spotted where it’s flushed.

Pearl nods, quick. “I’ll get the cot,” she says. “Sir, start a fire in the fireplace. Do you know how to do that?”

“It was my farm before it was yours,” says Jordan, sharp, and he lets himself down the stairs before she can respond.

#

The hood is taken off in his new cell when he’s on his knees. The light is — his eyes are watering, and everything hurts, and there are two of them. There are two new people. A boy, and a girl, younger than him but not by much. He doesn’t know them. The boy gets him loose from the chains while the girl unties the gag from around his mouth. His eyes are streaming, from the light coming in through the tiny window, and he is already feeling wrecked about it because he doesn’t have that much water to spare.

“Where’s Bellamy?” he asks, his mouth wooden.

The boy glances to the girl, uncertain. “Bellamy went back to the city,” she says. “You’re at the farm now.” Farm? He doesn’t know where — what — The girl reaches forward and feels his forehead. Bellamy did that too. He doesn’t understand why.

“He’s burning up,” says the girl to the boy. Seems unlikely, it’s freezing in here. “Get him downstairs, by the fire.” They share a Look, and Murphy — 

He has been dragged around all day. He just wants to sleep. He would sleep on the floor next to the fire, if he was allowed, if the fire was crackling. When the boy picks him up and slings him over a shoulder, he holds tight. He lets himself tune out until he’s set down on a surface -- it’s soft, and it hurts the absolute minimum possible, and he’s unrestrained so he just drops onto it, curling immediately towards the warmth. His eyes are so  _ wet  _ because of the light, and he has to keep them closed. The hood had been a mercy, after all. The girl wants to poke and prod at him, and feel his chest when he breathes, and she can do what she wants, okay. There are blankets put on top of him, and he’s still cold but things are looking up. 

There’s another smooth voice on top of the girl’s, and the boy’s. “That’s all we need right now, boss,” says the boy.

“I want to stay,” says the smooth voice, and that stirs some kind of recognition in him. Monty (worried face, stupid puns, brother) -- and Harper (bright and true) -- like if you put them together, this is what you might get. Like if you messed with the DNA simulators on the Ring long enough, except brought to life.

“‘S that the baby?” he asks the girl next to him. “The --” they’ve met, the baby is older than him, but you don’t miss 26 years of your nephew’s life just to leave him out on all the teasing. He’s got a name, right? C’mon, dumbass, pick up where you left off. “Jordan?”

His voice is brought closer again. “Hey, Murphy,” he says, and his voice is gentle, and Murphy opens his eyes, and --  _ fuck,  _ his face is Bellamy’s when he comes down to the cell and brings the light with him. The same expression, and he -- he’s got the  _ remote  _ held loosely in one hand. It’s the baby. It’s  _ Jordan. _

“Float yourself,” Murphy mutters, knowing instantly that it’s the wrong thing to say, and he closes his eyes against the onslaught of pain that’s coming. For a long time, there’s only the pounding of his head and the thousands of other little aches he’s already got. 

The girl’s voice is the next thing he hears: “Step away, sir. We don’t know if he’s contagious yet.” Murphy coughs wetly, trying to sell it.

Jordan steps back, away from the cot, feet heavy on the floor. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll come back later, then? Let me know if there’s anything I can do for him.” A shifting of shadows on the insides of his eyelids, and then the baby is gone. Murphy breathes a small sigh of relief. It wheezes.

The boy from before shifts above him. “You really think he’s contagious?” he asks, like Murphy isn’t laying right there. He keeps his eyes closed. Maybe they think he’s unconscious.

“No,” says the girl. “Cold air, damp conditions, and neglect aren’t contagious. I’ll need you to go into the market for supplies. I’ll draw you a list.”

“I’ll bring the truck up when you’re ready,” the boy agrees.

More shadows, more footsteps. A door bangs open then closed. The world is muffled again. Quiet.

Cloth rustles, and metal scrapes gently.

The world gets dark, too.

“I know you’re awake, skairat,” says the girl from very close. “Try to sit up. Your lungs will thank you.”

He tries. His limbs are made of lead and his joints of jelly. It’s a bad combination. She hauls him up the rest of the way, and shoves pillows behind his back to keep him mostly upright. His breathing eases. 

He peels one eye open, and then the other. He’s in a kitchen, and it’s dim. The lights are off, and the curtains are drawn. He’s on a narrow day-bed, and there’s a woodstove crouched near the foot of it. It’s throwing off heat, and if he could move, he’d crawl inside just to burn the last of the frost from his bones.

He blinks slowly. His eyes feel gummy, heavy. He lifts a hand to rub them, and grimaces at when he catches sight of the raw, scabby skin of his wrists. Miller liked his games, and his handcuffs.

There are no handcuffs, now. No elbow restraints. He touches his wrists, gently, gently. They hurt. They’re hot, swollen. Something’s wrong under the surface.

What else is new?

A shadow moves at the corner of his eye. He tenses up hard, but it’s only the girl, bending over a scrap of something at a long table. A pencil scratches paper.

She glances over her shoulder at him, the girl stranger. She is broad and short, built for manual labor, but that’s not what catches his attention.

“What’s wrong with your face?” he croaks.

“What’s wrong with yours?” she replies. 

He laughs, coughs, and keeps coughing.

The world goes dotty and dark at the edges.


	2. two million naturally occurring sweet things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where am I?” he asks. “Who are you? Where’s Bellamy?” Maybe this is Bellamy’s big house, that he lives in with Echo and Griffin, and he’s finally allowed to come back home, and Emori is just behind the door -- Jordan’s here, already --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i hope this 7k word update is satisfying after 93 days
> 
> many thanks to w
> 
> "two million naturally occurring sweet things" is from the Ross Gay poem, "sorrow is not my name"

Jordan catches Will halfway to the spot around back where the farmhands rinse off before they come in for supper. Will waits when he calls out, patient, but there’s steel beneath the softness.

A bolt from the blue, and Jordan wonders how old Will is. Older than him? Younger? It’s hard to tell. Wasn’t he one of the cryo-sleeping agents woken after the Council took Prime? The details are lost to a haze - the weeks after the take-over weren’t…

Weren’t good.

There’s no sense dwelling on it.

He brushes the thought aside, because Will is still looking at him, waiting.

“I’m going with you,” he says. He scrubs his hands on his pants. “To town. For medicine. I’m going with you.”

“Might be a bit tight, three of us in the truck,” Will ventures after a minute. Jordan searches for the name of the -- boy? Girl? Person? -- that usually accompanies Will to the market. It’s -- a season? That sounds right.

“So it’ll be you and me. Autumn-”

“-August-”

“-Right, August, they’ll need to help Pearl out with dinner. So you and I will go and get Murphy’s medicine.”

“You want to drive the truck, Boss?” asks Will.

“No, that’s alright,” says Jordan, trying to be -- easy with it. His incompetence. He tries to smile through it. “You can drive. I’ll ride shotgun.”

“Sure, boss,” says Will, easy. “Did Pearl finish drawing up the list?”

“Oh, um-”

“Yes.” Pearl has the worst habit of materializing in Jordan’s blind-spot whenever her name is mentioned. Like a dour genie. He’s considered asking her to wear a bell before, but he doubts she would take it well.

She tips her head slightly and passes over a list and a stub of a pencil. The sketches he spies are detailed, but small, like she’s used to using every centimeter of space on any given page.

She tells Will the plant names, and their effects. Covers all the bases, so that if one method of ID fails, there’s a back up. He nods along with her, like he understands what she means, putting cramped little notes in the margins. Jordan can hardly make heads or tails of it. Will tucks the paper away in a pocket, and nods to Jordan. Jordan nods back, feeling foolish.

“Ready to go?” Jordan asks, and Will nods, pulling a pair of car keys from his pocket.

The truck is like everything on the farm: big and built to last. It’s covered in mud, and blue beneath. Not a hint of rust, and one of the farmhands must be a gearhead, too, because Will doesn’t have any trouble getting it started.

Even after so long, it’s still a little bit exciting to ride in one at all. Jordan’s never been in one until touching down here, just seen it in movies he’d watched with his parents. His stomach lurches as the wheels begin to turn, and they’re off.

Farmland slips by. Jordan puts a fist to his stomach, and watches it go.

The movies never mentioned the vertigo, or the nausea. Jordan swallows, and swallows, and keeps his mouth clamped shut, just in case. 

The hours fly and drag simultaneously. 

It’s long past supper time and the sun’s set by the time New Arkadia looms in the distance. Despite the business they’ve been sent for, Jordan can’t help the surge in his chest, seeing those lights in the distance.

It’ll be good to see the others again.

#

The clinic is in town, in the main part of the settlement that is known as New Sanctum. Bellamy had one good name in him, and he stole it from a book. But it still looks occupied, lit up even this late at night. Will parks neatly in the grass nearby, pulling the -- breaks? home. Jordan needs a minute to figure out how to get out of the truck. Will waits for him on the wet grass -- it rained, recently. Maybe last night? Two nights ago? Jordan hasn’t -- bothered to keep up with the times, in a long while. The air smells like -- _two million naturally occurring sweet things_ \-- from a poem his father used to read to his mother.

No time for that. They’re here for a reason. Will stands with him while he knocks at the door, too quiet at first, and then too loud. It’s Jackson who comes to the door; his open face is pulled tight with worry, and he looks back and forth, from Will to Jordan. “What can I do for you?” he asks.

Jordan hands over the list, pulled from his pocket. “We need some medicine,” he says. “For the farm.”

“Of course,” says Jackson, looking back and forth from Jordan’s face to Will’s. “Come in, then.” He steps aside, holding the door open for both of them. Will follows after Jordan.

The clinic is bright, lit with florescent bulbs like they had on the ship, and very clean. Miller is leaned up against a counter, arms crossed. Jordan is not sure what capacity he is supposed to be here in. Jackson disappears behind a cabinet. “Heard you got a new prisoner today,” says Miller, and his voice is -- mean, maybe? Jordan doesn’t know what cause Miller has to be mean to him.

“Sure did,” says Will, easy, meeting Miller halfway. “He’s very sick, so we’re getting medicine.”

“Course,” says Miller, like it’s a challenge. “No other reason for a _farmhand_ to be this far away from home.”

“If you’ve got a problem with me, sir, you can take it up with Pearl,” says Will, perfectly respectful, reasonable. Jordan notes how this advice neatly strips him of all power. Well. He defers to Pearl on most things having to do with the human side of the farm -- discipline, work rotation, all that. “Otherwise, I’m just here to get meds. I don’t need any trouble, alright?”

“No trouble, unless you make it,” agrees Miller, and he smiles. But not -- not in a friendly way, Jordan doesn’t think. He thinks, hazily, that maybe he should step in.

“Will has been nothing but exemplary on the farm,” says Jordan, which sounds dumb as soon as it leaves his mouth.

Will cuts his eyes to Jordan, and smiles, in a surprised but kind of pitying way. “Officer Miller here arrested me,” he explains. “He’s just making sure we’re all --” a pause, a search for an acceptable word. “-- good, here.”

“Of course,” says Jordan, and wonders how Will is faring at the market, once a week, if Miller ever stops by and tries to make sure there’s no -- trouble -- there, either. He doesn’t need to dwell on that thought for very long, however -- Jackson emerges from behind the cabinets, carrying two bottles of pills.

“How much does your farmhand weigh?” asks Jackson, frowning, looking at one of the bottles.

Will shrugs. “Don’t know,” he says. “A hundred pounds, soaking wet, maybe.”

“Have him take one of these a day,” says Jordan, handing over one bottle. “And two of these,” another bottle. “Once he starts getting better and putting on more weight, call me. You have a phone at the farm, don’t you?”

“No sir,” says Will. “It’s too far out to get radio signal. But I’ll update you when I’m at the market, is that acceptable?”

“That’s acceptable,” says Jackson. “Is that all you two needed?”

“Yeah,” says Will. “Thanks a bunch.”

#

Murphy wakes in bursts, cold starts, and fits. Things are hazy, he knows, and he doesn’t remember if he’s awake or asleep most of the time. He thinks he hallucinates, some; he thinks that he has a fever, now that he’s in a warm place, finally, now that he might live, the fever might kill him. He coughs up fluid. He aches. He doesn’t dream.

But he isn’t alone. There is a cool hand at his forehead, across his cheeks; there is a soft bed underneath him; there are soft blankets against his dry skin. There is someone tipping his head back and making him drink warm water and warm broth. Someone cleans him up when he pisses the bed, changes his sheets and brushes back his sweaty hair. Someone wipes gently at his collar, mending what they can, careful not to touch it anymore than they have to. They whisper sweet nothings to him, words he can’t understand, and ignore his whimpering.

And he wakes up. Eventually, he gets better. Enough to sit up in bed, take in the little world around him. The blankets, a tangle at his feet. The little woodstove crouched up against the wall, throwing off heat. The -- someone sitting in a chair by his bed, a mess of yarn in her lap, two sharp plastic things sticking out of it. She sets it aside and looks at him, expectant.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed. Bold! Unexpected! You don’t understand. He’s _desperate._ He has to pee. The girl stands up immediately, and he flinches back. “I gottago,” he says, slurring his words into one. He doesn’t even know where -- a safe corner is. A bathroom, maybe. He glances -- it’s dark outside, but there is a window set into the wall, and a little farther beyond, a door. He can go outside.

“You’re safe here,” says the girl, her brow furrowed.

“Gotta _go,_ ” he repeats, and lurches for the door to the outside. He stumbles over his own feet and doesn’t make it to the door, winds up on his hands and knees, panting and nauseous.

The girl comes to examine him, and crouches to speak to him. “Where you _gottago_ so bad?” she asks, and she’s being a little mean about it, but not -- in a bad way.

“Gotta pee,” he explains finally, embarrassed.

The girl mutters something to herself, maybe a swear, and lifts him up, easy, like a ragdoll. Holds him to her chest. He whimpers, and holds onto her. She takes him past the little bed, and then goes the other way, through a hallway and into a little room. There’s a sink here, and a _toilet._ What luxury. She helps him get his pants off, and then shuts the door behind her. “Call when you’re done,” she says, perfunctory. “I’ll help you back to bed.”

He does his business -- it’s a relief, incredible -- and then sits there for a long while, marveling at how -- _okay_ he feels. The -- weakness, that’s pretty bad, he could still like, get up and walk around when he was in his cell -- but he isn’t coughing anymore, and he doesn’t have the awful chills. He takes another minute for himself, and calls out for the girl. She comes back, and after she helps him pull his pants back on, she scoops him back up and carries him back to bed.

“You’re strong,” he tells her, a little loopy. He feels sick, nauseous and dizzy, but kind of high with it.

“You’re very sick,” she tells him. When she lays him back in bed, she introduces him to a bottle with a wide enough mouth for his dick. He is -- incredibly embarrassed. At least she isn’t. “You need to sleep again,” she tells him.

“I don’t want to,” he says, petulant, now that he’s discovered the power of speech. He’s testing what he can get away with. What freedoms he’s allowed.

“Alright,” says the girl. “Then lie there and rest,” she orders.

“Hmm,” he says, but he doesn’t have any objections to that. “Where am I?” he asks. “Who are you? Where’s Bellamy?” Maybe this is Bellamy’s big house, that he lives in with Echo and Griffin, and he’s finally allowed to come back home, and Emori is just behind the door -- Jordan’s here, already --

“Why are you crying?” asks the girl. “What hurts?”

“You’re being so _nice_ to me,” is what he says.

“I’ll put you to work soon enough,” she warns him, but even that is better than a cell.

#

Time — he gets better at time. It isn’t just the girl — her name is Pearl — taking care of him, after a while — there’s a boy, too, Will, and an older woman, Maura, but she talks to him in a mom voice and he flinches at everything anyway so really, she shouldn’t be offended. But he likes Pearl best. She isn’t _mean_ to him, but she doesn’t pity him either, and she never laughs at him. She wipes at his face and lets herself be clutched, sometimes, when he’s half-asleep and desperate for anything, even though when he wakes up fully he retreats, embarrassed at — letting that vulnerability be known.

It’s not Bellamy’s house. It’s a big house, a farmhouse, says Pearl, but he doesn’t know much of it beyond the daybed in the living room, the bathroom that he is just beginning to be able to stumble to, unassisted, and the murmur of voices just beyond, in the kitchen, he thinks. And the outside. He’s fought his way outside, twice, both times when Will wasn’t paying attention. Once, because he was afraid and thought Pearl was dead — his dreams are terrible — and once so that he could piss outside, leaning heavily up against the wall, because the bathroom was occupied when he made it there. Will had to carry him back to the daybed, but — he saw, beyond — there was a barn, and a shed, and _animals_ — things that he’d never seen before, living, breathing, inhuman creatures, kept captive inside fences. Farther out, a tower, and fields and fields of crops, and people working in them, and a little low building that was not unlike a barn but not yet like the farmhouse. Or what he thinks the farmhouse looks like, anyway. Yellow, and homey.

Jordan comes to watch him sometimes, too, and he hates that. Hates seeing Monty’s face in this — _child,_ in this strange man who is older than him, somehow — hates that his son could see him so weak, so insensate. Monty wouldn’t — If Monty were here, he wouldn’t have let Bellamy do any of this at all, would have talked some sense into him. This useless replacement, this child who had never been off the spaceship he grew up on, both his parents dead, and they expect him to be in charge of the whole farmhouse? They don’t even expect him to do real work, here — as far as Murphy can tell, he just sits in his little attic and makes plans, or sits next to Murphy’s bedside and sketches in a notebook, and calls for Will if Murphy tries to get up.

Eventually, they expect Murphy to do real work, at least. Pearl has him sit up at the counter in the kitchen, and hands him a bowl and a big wooden spoon. “Until it’s mixed,” she says, and continues doing something else while he tries to manage the bowl and the spoon and it’s the most complicated thing he’s had to handle in literal _years._ It gets mixed, though, which is what matters, and Pearl eventually takes the bowl away and replaces it with another bowl to be mixed with. Salad, maybe? There’s dressing. He doesn’t sneak any bites. He’s not hungry very often, and he’s exhausted already from this task. He falls asleep in the middle of stirring one of the flour/liquid mixes, and Pearl startles him awake but saves the bowl before she catches him with the other arm. She helps him back to bed and he sleeps thankfully through the noises and hubub of all the farmhands coming in for dinner. He’s heard it happen once or twice, and it always just gives him a headache. Pearl wakes him up later, and he drinks his warm broth without help.

He gets better slowly. He can tell he’s getting better because he’s awake more often, despite his best efforts. He can tell he’s getting better because Pearl gives him different tasks that require more of his attention: chopping celery, peeling potatoes, kneading bread. He stays awake most of the day, under Pearl’s watchful eye. Slowly, he is introduced to solid foods, although they’re bland and unremarkable. Almost worse than the broth. But when he doesn’t throw them up, when he’s been awake mostly during the day for a whole week, when he’s helped in the kitchen more days than he has not, when his eyes have adjusted to the brightness, to the population, to all of the happenings, Pearl brings him to the kitchen and sits him down at the table. She sets the table with Will. One plate for everyone, a set of silverware (fuck, does he even remember how to use these?), and people — farmhands — start filing in from outside.

The noise. The fucking _noise._ They’re all talking at once, on top of each other, and he hadn’t realized exactly how shielded he was from it on the daybed. But he stays sitting there, even as his stomach roils with the noises, the confusing smells coming from the kitchen, at once both appealing and nauseating. The farmhands come in and sit down at the table, looking askance at him but not asking him anything yet. He swallows, swallows, swallows. It’s just! A lot of people!

Pearl comes out from the kitchen, and starts serving everyone from a big bowl. It looks like — salad, and biscuits, and some kind of meat, and beans. It’s a lot. It’s so much. When it comes around to him, Murphy stares, but he slices his biscuit, aware that he is holding his knife wrong but not sure how to fix it, and starts applying butter, preparing to take a bite. The farmhand next to him shoves him, and he drops the biscuit. He glares — what’s the fucking catch? The farmhand shakes his head, and then nods down to Pearl, at the other farmhands with their hands in their lap. “Not until Pearl sits down,” he says.

Murphy settles, but he doesn’t like it. But here — here. As soon as Pearl sits down at her plate where she’s served herself an even portion to everyone else, the noise starts back up again, everyone talkingon top of each other, where it had subsided before. “Everyone,” Pearl says, over the din, and they quiet down again. “We’ll go around the table and introduce ourselves to Murphy, our newest helper. He has a few more restrictions than most, and he came to us very sick, so he’ll be staying with us for a while.” A twist of her mouth in amusement. “I’m Pearl,” she says, an example. “I run the house.” To her left, she looks to Will.

“I’m Will,” says Will, easily, and he is as friendly as ever. “I’m Pearl’s second, and I handle most of the fieldwork.” Murphy tries to arrange his face into a smile for Will. He doesn’t quite make it, and focuses again on buttering his own biscuit with the foreign knife in his hand. They go around the table like that; Maura, who has sat with him sometimes, does the scheduling and laundry. Artemis, an aggressively pretty girl who looks as though she would just as soon kill him as kiss him, handles the livestock. Sumner, her ‘second’, says she works with the working animals. Oliver, an older man with graying hair, is their mechanic. August, a boy — a girl? — A boygirl — drives to Sanctum every week with their harvest and negotiates what they are allowed to keep. Keavy, the guy next to him, who shoved him, helps Will with fieldwork; he describes himself as Will’s ‘second’. A second seems to be kind of an assistant to the — first? — who follows them but also is sort of relatedly responsible for their things. Murphy can’t decide if he wants to put effort into understanding this or if it simple will not matter to him in the future. Yuval introduces himself as “Yuval” but everyone else calls him “Guts”, also works with the animals. Somehow. Redd accompanies August to the Market, but then Yuval shoves him and says “Your full name, c’mon,” and he admits to being called Noureddine, which Murphy agrees has too many syllables for his own lazy mouth. At some point, all the names and introductions blend together over his food: Sumner, Gabriel,Mahmoud, Macallan, Ami — “Arundhathy, c’mon,” someone else jokes, and she blushes and looks away. At last, Elias, a boy with a scraggly mustache and glasses who does something with someone, Murphy honestly couldn’t tell you what.

Eventually, when everyone’s stopped with the introductions and they’re talking about their own things again and Murphy is picking apart the lettuce in his salad with his fingers — he can’t eat anymore, but nobody is ready to get up yet, and he feels kind of sick but he’s genuinely enjoying the company now, even if it’s overwhelming — he asks a question, about someone he expected to see here. “Where’s the baby?” he asks, and the conversation pauses a little.

“Sorry, what?” asks someone, Elias, maybe.

“The baby,” repeats Murphy, and then has to actually struggle for the name. “Jordan.”

Pearl’s face closes down a little, not like it was very expressive before. “Jordan doesn’t eat with us,” she explains. “He gets food brought up to him later.”

“But isn’t he —“ Murphy struggles to form _that_ sentence, too. There’s so much that he doesn’t know here, and he desperately wants to belong in this warm environment, with these people who are so obviously friends, nearly a family. “Isn’t he one of you?”

“No,” says Pearl simply, and there’s another terrible short pause, and then Oliver says something, and August laughs too loud, and then conversation resumes again. Murphy wants to be on his daybed again and maybe asleep and his stomach hurts. He pushes his plate away from himself and rests his head on his arm and watches everything from there. Eventually, Will takes away his plate and everyone is kind of meandering over to hang out in the den, which is where his daybed is, and he feels like he has nowhere to hide, but he wants to lay down. He can practically feel Will and Pearl talking about him in the kitchen.

Eventually, it’s — Gabriel, he thinks — who circles back to him, and offers his arm to hang onto, and he takes it, gratefully, to guide him back to his daybed. “So how’d you get that collar around your neck?” asks Gabriel, straight to the point, as he gets him settled. Gabriel has to lean down to do it, tip his whole body towards Murphy.

“Found it,” he says, breezy, trying out the lie. “You know, just laying around in the field. Turns out you shouldn’t do that.”

Gabriel laughs, but he knows a lie when he hears one. Still, this seems to be excuse enough for more people to start asking questions, like a gate opened before a flood. “What did you do to get sent here?” Keavy asks, his voice curious, unafraid.

“I killed someone,” he says, which is not technically true but is probably what’s written down on paper.

Artemis scoffs. “That can’t be all of it,” she says, flippant. “There’s plenty of killers on this farm.”

He bares his teeth, almost a snarl. He can guess that she’s probably one of them. “I killed Clarke Griffin,” he says. “Bellamy’s —“ lover? god? soulmate? Whatever the kids are calling it these days. “His martyr,” he decides on, which doesn’t seem like, a sentence that connects together.

Everyone goes a little silent, then. “There’s a statue of her,” says Mahmoud, unexpectedly. “In Sanctum. You killed her?”

“Bellamy thinks I did,” says Murphy, and that’s when Pearl comes through to glare them away from any further questions. He feels very tired, and he’s grateful for her, and then he’s asleep.

#

When he’s well enough to walk on his own all the way around the farmhouse, to the kitchen, to his daybed, and all the way back, and he barely tires, Pearl takes him on a tour of the farm. All the way out to the fields, and she explains the rotation of the farmhands in the barracks, the low buildings to the left of the fields with its own bonfire. The people he eats dinner with most nights aren’t the farmhands, they’re the captains; the farmhouse itself is referred to as the Big House, which is where the captains all sleep. All other farmhands go to the barracks, do not pass go, and work in the fields. Some of them are handpicked to become captains or seconds, but with fifteen people living in the Big House now, they’re looking to build more barracks, not more leaders.

Pearl points out the boundaries that he isn’t to cross; here, at the back of the fields that goes into the forest, here again, at the twisted tree where laundry hangs just out of reach — Pearl explains that beyond, there is a stream where they do their washing up and occasional swimming, but he is not allowed, because it is not technically farm grounds. Another boundary to the west side, behind the barracks. And then lastly, in front of the farmhouse, where the Rover — not the Rover, some other equivalent for this stupid moon — dropped him off. He remembers the crunch of the gravel underneath his feet, the rattle of chains. “Here’s the boundary,” says Pearl, indicating just at the end of the gravel driveway before he supposes it turns into the road. There’s a black stripe on the rocks, something that he doesn’t think was there before he was.

Impulsively, he dances across it, to test it out, and it’s a familar pain, not dangerous yet, even though it _fucking sucks_ , maybe worse now that he’s had time without it. Watching Pearl’s face, he reaches out to her, feeling vengeful, spiteful, and touches her spotted hand, his thumb across her wrist, just enough. The shock, when it comes again, travels through him and into her as well, and she cries out and pulls him out of danger.

“Do you always hurt people who are trying to help you?” she asks him, sharp, disapproving.

“Sorry,” says Murphy, and he’s not sorry at all, he finds. Maybe it will make her think twice about shocking him when he inevitably fucks it up.

“The question, Murphy,” says Pearl, uninterested in his insincere apologies.

Does he always hurt the people trying to help him? Yeah, he does, but sometimes he really is sorry about it. And that hurts worse than the shock, doesn’t it? That’s what makes tears prick at the corners of his vision. “Yeah,” he says, truthfully, wondering what kind of answer she thought she would get. But Pearl just sighs and takes off again across the yard, and he has little choice but to follow her.

#

Eventually, when he is well enough to walk on his own and sleep on his own most nights, Pearl banishes him from the daybed and begins stripping the bed down. He sits in a chair and snuffles and watches her. “You’re graduating, skaiboy,” she tells him, although she sounds fond. “You get your own bedroom now.”

He immediately thinks of the cell, and shudders. He doesn’t _want_ to be cut off from people, he doesn’t _want_ to be — seperate from everybody else on the farm, like this. But he drags his bundle of clothes up the stairs — and he can handle stairs now, how novel! — and there is a room at the end of the hallway, but instead of there being a wall or a normal door, there is a section of bars with a hinged door cut out of it, and he wants — he doesn’t want — he is never going to escape this, not really.

There is a mattress with sheets on the wooden floor, and he has a window, just like Bellamy promised him, but it has a set of bars on the outside, so he can’t climb out and what? What would he fucking do? _Where is he gonna fucking go?_ Everything he does — everywhere he goes, it always comes back to this, the cage. He sucks in a breath, and turns to Pearl. Jordan is here, too, coming down the stairs, in his hands, a bundle of —

The chains that he used to wear in the cell. He is going to be sick. He wants to hang onto something, to stop the world from spinning out underneath him, but he’s holding onto his clothing, and he looks to Pearl, desperate. “Captain,” says Pearl, dry. “Save the chains for the red sun. They’re not needed.”

“Bellamy said —“ says Jordan, in his reedy voice, and Murphy is reminded once more of how _young_ he is, how used he must be to accepting orders. How Bellamy must take advantage of that, even here, on the farm, where he’s supposed to be in charge.

“They’re not needed,” says Pearl firmly. “Murphy, put your clothes away and come down for dinner in fifteen minutes. Captain, will you be joining us?” neatly moving the subject along.

“That’s alright,” says Jordan, clearly defeated. “Well, cheers, Murphy,” he says, awkward, and disappears down the hall. Pearl sighs, and Murphy, unexpectedly, stifles a laugh. He feels hysteric. He feels broken open. He feels like Pearl can see all his insides, like he’s just clear all the way through, like he’s a ghost.

“Murphy,” says Pearl, maybe for the second or third time. “Murphy,” and her hand on his back, and he shocks unexpectedly into the touch, like he’s coming back into his own body. “We can get you some curtains,” she says. “A box for your clothes. Will will lock you in at night, and unlock you in the morning. It’s a change, but it’s not the end of the world, Murphy.”

“Okay,” he says, after a long, horrible moment. She lets her hand drop. She opens his cell door. He goes in. She doesn’t close it. She goes downstairs. He stands there. He stands there. He stands there —

He is still here. He is well. He has people. He folds his clothes next to the mattress, just for something to do. He goes down to dinner. He is fed well. People ask after him. He watches people play board games that he doesn’t understand. The only thing he knows how to play is chess. He climbs the stairs again. He goes into his cell. He sits on the mattress. It’s fine. It supports his weight. He doesn’t know anything about mattresses. He watches people go up and down the hallway. They can see him, but they must have gotten used to this cell-bedroom in their space, and they barely give him a second glance. He has plenty of nice things. Why does he feel so — _hollow_?

Will knocks on the frame of his cell door, like he’s asking to come in. Murphy glances up and then just stares at him dumbly. “You all set for the night?” Will asks.

“Yeah, I guess — yeah.” He doesn’t need to move from this spot for the rest of the night.

Will pulls the door shut and Murphy closes his eyes, like it will somehow block out the sound of the lock being turned. “Do I deserve this?” Murphy hears himself ask, because maybe he does. Maybe he has done something so bad that he deserves to spend his entire life in a cage, behind bars. He thought, once, that once he got to the ground, he would always be free — but the world is just a series of cages. His body is a series of cages. Everything is always penning him in.

Will stops what he’s doing (leaving), and tucks the keys back into his pocket. “On Old Earth,” he says, pushing them two hundred years into the past. “I was studying to be a lawyer. That’s — the person who interprets the law in a court. There were lots more laws on Old Earth. But the school to become a lawyer was very expensive, and I was in a lot of debt, and rent was due — that’s, you have to pay money to live in your house — and I got involved with this gang, and —“ Will’s face twists. “Anyhow, it went bad. You know, armed robbery, dead cops, the whole shebang. They sentenced me to mine on Eligius, and I got involved with worse things. You met Mcreary, I think?”

Murphy shrugs. It was a long time ago. Also, this doesn’t really seem to be answering his question.

“And then we got to this moon, and when Bellamy was announcing the new council, I asked if we were getting a vote, and he just kind of smiled at me, and then I was getting branded and sent to work at the farm for the rest of my life. And you know what? I think that was the only thing I didn’t deserve.”

Murphy looks at him. “You’re — a prisoner too?” he asks, trying to wrap his mind around all of that.

Will laughs a little, quiet, more a huff of amused air than anything vocal. “Everyone here is, Murphy,” he says. “You, me, Pearl, Jordan, all the farmhands down at the barracks, the captains here in the house — we all did some crime to be sent here. Bellamy thought that killing us wasn’t very efficient; he still wanted to get some use out of us. It’s just with you — he wasn’t being nice about it. He wasn’t —“ Will searches for the words. “He wasn’t pretending like he has your best interests at heart. You bring something different out of him, yeah? Your shared past, whatever he thought about you before he became king?”

Murphy shakes his head, slow, trying to — trying to what? Trying to deny it? It’s useless. He knows Will’s got it right.

“I don’t think it’s a question of what either of us _deserves,_ Murphy. I don’t think either of us deserves this — me on this side of the cell, you on that side. But it’s what we’ve got, isn’t it? Until we decide to change the rules that brought us here, huh?”

Murphy shrugs. He thinks Will is trying to get him to — see a point of view, to sympathize with a different way of thinking. But Bellamy wouldn’t — he wasn’t anything to Bellamy but a brother, a brother who betrayed him in the end, like Bellamy always knew he would. And Bellamy took care of him, and it was the council that decided that he should stay down in that cell, and it was Bellamy who brought him here, out of that cell —

“I’ll be here to unlock you in the morning,” says Will, gentle, cutting through his thoughts. “Do you need anything before I go to bed?”

Murphy looks at him, considers. “Can I have a glass of water?” he asks.

“Sure,” says Will, and goes to fill him one from the sink. When he returns, he hands the glass to Murphy through the bars, and Murphy takes it, his fingers barely touching Will’s. “You need anything else, I’m right next door. We share that wall —“ pointing to the left one, the one closest to Murphy’s head when he lays down. “You just knock and I’ll be up in a jiffy. Good night, Murphy.”

“’Night, Will,” says Murphy, and he turns away, pulling his blanket over him. He leaves the water, untouched, by his bed. Just in case.

#

He is helping Pearl in the kitchen when it happens. He has gotten to a comfortable level with her, gotten so they can joke together. He finds he respects her; respects the way she carries herself, the way she treats her farmhands and her captains. He likes the way she calls Jordan ‘the baby’ with him, the way they have this inside joke between them. She’s strict, but she’s fair, and she doesn’t mind him when he talks too much or too loud, and she’s not afraid to tell him to shut up.

So. He thinks he is on even ground with her. And then he says, “Yeah? There’s nothing between you and the baby?” He’s seen the notes that Jordan leaves her on the plates she takes down from his attic; he imagines her lingering at the door, calling him _Captain,_ maybe joking with him like he does with her. Sometimes Jordan just draws little smiley faces, or writes _thank you, Pearl, for all you do_ , but Pearl’s face never changes as she scrapes the scraps into the recycling.

Pearl turns to him, wooden spoon raised, and that’s when the shocks start.

At first, he thinks it’s just a regular malfunction. He doesn’t see Pearl doing anything, and it’s not that bad, and Pearl is saying something to him. Then her voice rises and the shocks go with it, and he clutches the counter behind him and struggles not to drop to his knees. “Pearl,” he gasps, and he — shouldn’t have said anything, should’ve let it be, she’s got too much power, he shouldn’t have been casual with her, especially not about something as dumb as _crushes_ — “I’m sorry, I’m sorry —“

She zaps him again, harder, and he _does_ go down. But then he can hear her saying his name, and he’ll never, he’ll never fucking talk again — he hears himself begging, like he’s outside of his body, like he’s separate from himself — she’s put down her spoon, so at least she’s probably not going to hit him while he’s down, but c’mon, three, four of the big ones? She’s lucky he’s not unconscious. It seems to subside a little bit, as Pearl tugs at his shirt front, pulling him down onto the cool kitchen floor, which feels good, at least. And then it goes off again, while she’s still touching him, and he can see her face twist, and he can see both her hands, and it’s not her. It’s not her. He can feel her shout through her hands: “Get Will! Get Gabriel! Now, Keavy, yes, it’s an emergency!”

#

Will knocks on his attic door just as he is about to make a breakthrough — maybe — in the plans for plotting next season’s crop. Jordan tries to ignore it, as if he can pretend he isn’t home, but then Will knocks again, and it sounds urgent, so Jordan sighs and stands up and walks to the door to open it.

“Hey, boss,” says Will, easy, rocking back on his heels.“Do you still have that remote?”

Jordan doesn’t have shit, he doesn’t know shit, he was in the _middle_ of something, William, and it’s all dissolving now— “The remote to what?” he asks, thinking of remote connections in a computer, how they connect to each other, how the computers made connections to each other in space.

“Looking for the remote to Murphy’s collar, boss,” says Will, patient.

Jordan frowns. He has no idea where that is. “I’m sure I have ti around here somewhere,” he says, stalling for time, starting to look through his desk. “Let’s see, I was cleaning up earlier, so I’ve made everything worse, of course…” He glances up at Will. “Is it important that you have it right now? I was kind of in th emiddle of something.”

“Yes, boss,” says Will, insistent, even as he sounds tolerant.

Jordan sighs. “Oh, well, I’m sure it is. I don’t usually keep it on me, but —“ he pats himself down, just to be sure. “Oh, here!” Victorious, he pulls it from his pocket. The thin square has a few options, but the knob at the top has been pushed into the _on_ position. Jordan feels a stab of guilt until he realizes it must be out of range, otherwise he would surely be hearing screams. “Oh, it’s switched to the on position,” he says aloud. “I’m not sure how that happened, I’ll switch it off. It’s out of range though, surely, I’m sure there was no harm down.”

“I’m sure, boss,” says Will, still easy, but Jordan catches the tightening of his jaw. Perhaps he’s worried about Murphy? “Can I borrow it from you?” he asks.

Jordan frowns. He wishes he did not have to do any of this, or have this conversation. He wishes he was still thinking about next season, not — his uncle, and the power imbalance that lies between them, because of some crime, or another, or whatever is going on. He doesn not like to be bothered by the little goings-on of the farm, the tiny dramas. He has larger things to think about. “Alright,” he says, but he doesn’t hand it over. “Don’t you have your own?”

“Mechanical stuff, boss,” says Will. “Gabriel wanted to check it out.”

Oh, of course, Gabriel, the tall one, the leader of some rebellion or whatever , from before the takeover. “Well, make sure it’s returned to me,” says Jordan.

“Of course, boss,” says Will, and Jordan finally lets him take it.

#

Murphy is hanging onto consciousness when Will returns from the attic. “It’s done,” says Will, quiet. “Jordan had it turned all the way up by accident. I took it from him. I’d like Gabriel to look at the collar, make sure it doesn’t happen again.” The rare use of the Captain’s name, marking the disrespect that Will feels for him.

Murphy is laid up on the daybed again, and Pearl’s spotted hand is in his. If she’s been with him for a while, she’s been shocked too. She looks worn out. “It was a mistake?” she asks, rough. She passes a hand over her eyes, like that will change the scene before her.

“It was an accident,” repeats Will. “But he didn’t mean to shock Murphy. That much is true.”

“Have Gabriel disable it completely and then give it back to Jordan,” says Pearl, making a decision. Taking away his power in little ways, eroding it, as she has done with the farm, with the farmhands, while he barely notices, while he grieves for his parents and a girl he rarely knew. Keeping him just barely satisfied with small knowledge, content to let him waste away his life upstairs.

Will nods to Murphy. “Is he going to be alright?” he asks.

“He’ll live,” says Pearl grimly. “He won’t be able to work this evening, or do any of his chores in the morning, and I’ll have him sleep on the daybed again. You’ll send one of the farmhands up to do his work.” A glance over at Murphy, as she eases her hand out of his. “Do you have time to stay with him, or should I send Elias down?”

“I can sit with him,” says Will, and he takes Pearl’s place next to Murphy’s bedside. Murphy’s hooded eyes glance up at him, and the hand that Pearl recently let go of, reaches out to him. Will takes it and squeezes it. “It’s over,” Will tells him, not sure how much of it is going to get through the haze of pain. “You can sleep.”

Murphy whimpers, but his eyes flutter closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am writing for t100fics-for-blm! if you would like an update sooner than 93 days, you can donate any amount and this will get updated Way Faster than it would normally. find more information at the carrd here: https://t100fic-for-blm.carrd.co
> 
> thank you for reading!!! if you like it, please let me know in the comments. i treasure each of them dearly.

**Author's Note:**

> due to current events, my fic about:  
> -getting sick  
> -everyone living in a farm house  
> -prison abolition and examining our police structure  
> no longer seems very original!
> 
> nevertheless it is four chapters long and it is drafted out, so, please enjoy. i would love to see your thoughts in comment form, right here underneath this fic. i strive exclusively for validation.


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